Ask Guru Gobbo #53

1) Far too many to report here, I'm afraid. They usually keep an archive of all that is done on the day within the forums somewhere. Mostly, it would be oddities, but some years, the staff would get really cretive. Most recently, April Fools' Day was a masquarade, and the staff took on the aliases of one another or notable names. By "notable," I mean like how Baker/Nem/Geno turned into Teal Kirby, a name she may or may not still have? There was also the flopped effort to turn Rainbow Resort into Rainbow Rosettes due to, more or less, last minute planning and efforts.

Back in '07, the year of crazy, the forum pushed a huge word filter effort that changed commonly mentioned words or phrases into hilarious statements. Worst of all, any mention of the day itself came out as KRR Reconstruction, so the deed could not even be talked about. This year, too, the main page was altered to reflect the current 4Kids front page at the time. These pages are actually archived on the main site, and may be viewable still. Main Page, Forums. A full on documentary of AFD '07 Zaniness can be seen here, should you be logged in to the forums with an account. Otherwise, I'm not repeatin' all that.

In 2005 has its own document board of topics made that day as well. I think they are locked off to those without forum membership, for some reason. It was mainly just a lot of gag topics, including the staff's scheme to overthrow Kindar Spirit.

2004, the earliest documented zaniness I can find, had its events well chronicled. They appear in a rarely seen Events page. Word filters, gag FAQs, etc. The standard riff. Most notable about the day was flipping the main page on its head.

2) You ... proceed through it until you get out? I don't really know how else to describe it. You just keep going up, for the most part. If you mean how to acquire the stages Heart Star, there's a guide to that in the Dream Land 3 section. It's just three shapes to collect.

This statement is rather odd. They have plenty of recurring characters. In fact, Whispy Woods and King Dedede both trump the Knight in his number of appearances, especially since he's typically just in platformers, save Kirby no Kirakira Kizzu and partially Avalanche. Still, tho', as far as we know there already has been born a new recurring star in the form of the Squeak Squad. I mean, I doubt it, but you never know. They haven't had the chance to really spread their wings. Why, Meta Knight took a few years to do such, too. It was from Adventure to Super Star before he got another chance to really shine.

Regardless, it doesn't matter what I think since no one can meet up to the level Meta Knight does. He was engineered for fandom as I've said countless times before. The only way they could possibly meet the same is by making another puffball who was bad, kinda, but turned good. You know what I call this character? Meta Knight! There's no need to reinvent the wheel. Meta Knight does it just fine. Now, I suppose HAL could pull a Sonic and introduce wave after wave of foes-turned-friend-sorta. They had Knuckles, who was bad but became good, who was followed by Shadow, who was bad and I never bothered to learn what came of him. This guy, however, was more like Sonic, in that they were both Hedgehogs, but was more evil. It was almost like what could have happened with Shadow Kirby in Amazing Mirror. Still, Sega didn't know better and made yet another hedgehog, Silver, I think, who was from the future and fought Sonic at first before turning into an ally. I swear, how many times are they going to pull out new, similar, so-not-really-new characters? The last thing I'd want to have happen is Kirby follow this lame formula.

It's called a quip, a short, generally meaningless remark just tagged on to a statement meant as a joke or jab. I've said it before; I've poured out dozens of them and often get flak for some. They're just kinda thrown out there for kicks. All that other, well written, concise stuff that actually makes up the body of the work, the important stuff, is what is cared for. I don't know why folks can't identify a quip from an actual, meaningful and defended fact. But, yeah, he sorta put his foot in his mouth by saying Nintendo of America put their foot in their mouth. That sorta stuff happens you tag something on intended as a joke without much thought.

1) Your point makes me think of H. G. Well's The Time Machine and the Morlocks. For those of you who haven't read the book (like I have >_>'), in the future, human society became perfect and humanity developed into a soft, squishy, lazy breed. Well, half of them did. While the sponges known as Eloi loafed around in Utopia, the other half of humanity, the underground dwelling Morlocks, took to the opposite course of development, growing hardened, strong, and cannibalistic. The Morlocks did all the work for the upper class Eloi, and eventually this course of action led them to become like cattle for the stronger. Much like cows, the Eloi don't even care when one of their own vanished from the field.

Anyhoo, I don't think there's any C.H.U.D.s, or C.R.U.D.s since they are more round than humanoid in Dream Land. However, with how Kirby packs away the rest of them all, it makes you wonder who may be the real monster cannibal. Regardless, I think the food just grows and pops out of the place. It's a shiny, happy, wonderful star with all sorts of magical stuff that makes life better. Seems like popping out food from no where would go hand in hand with magicalnesses. Granted, someone could be working as a farmer, but since they are so lazy and sleep all the time, I don't see how that'd fit. You gotta work hard to get that stuff done, all day.

2) Kirby has never really displayed the need to breath. I touched on this notion before, or opened the possibility for infinite air reserves. Moreover, the entire realm of realism is basically ignored when you have a ball that lives on a star. Things like atmosphere or air in space have no right to be in Pop Star. Welcome to video game physics. Pick up your complimentary bag of child-like wonder and leave your science at the door.

3) He's eaten plenty of bad guys, if you count those as not being liked. Plus, if you eat a Mariel, the long-legged spider in Dream Land 3, Kirby takes damage. It's nasty, so that'd be a checked box in that list.

1) Quite. The void he drifted through was the same as in Kirby's stomach. That, or it was meant as some sort of parallel void he went to since not directly entering Kirby's stomach himself. This ending was a classic example of an abrupt, no questions, no answer, just for the fun of it finish. When it was made, they had no intention of explaining how he would escape the predicament. It was just to leave the viewer with a good chuckle at the end.

2) King Dedede was not really that big on monsters before Kirby showed up. More to the point, Holy Nightmare wasn't too geared on sending destructive monstrosities to the king as why would he buy them? Kill the customer? Not beneficial. Kirby's ship came down, if you recall, when it detected a monster of sizeable threat. Before this, if there was much of anything in the monster department, it would pushovers such as Lololo & Lalala. And I use those names as I refuse to use their altered names. Getting back to the point, Octakon was the first real threat to hit Dream Land. Once Kirby arrived, then the King wanted to get rid of the puffball with more monsters, and NME had further incentive to beam down more powerful Demon Beasts to try and snuff out a Star Warrior while still young. Or something along those general lines. That's the gist of it, folks.

Correction, you have one question as they both nice fit into the same box. In all honestly, Float Islands did not truly exist in in Super Star. More to truth, it was a mashed together combination of Float Islands and Castle Lololo. They wanted, first, for Spring Breeze to be as short as possible while still giving the Dream Land experience. To provide this, they only needed bare, minimum essentials. All that extra stuff could easily be cut out.

Because of this corner cut, and since a lot of unique situations and objects appeared in those two levels, they were eliminated. The Kaboola battle with the super charged Mint Leaf, the question blocks that popped out Chuckie, Flappers, Mumbies, and most of the creepy enemies from the castle, not to mention that spiffy pirate ship in Float Islands. No, all of this stuff and more was no where else repeated in the Super Star game. Why would they go through any more trouble with the throw-away sub-game to add a worthless, one-shot appearing graphic or such? It was simply just not practical. Also, length. They really wanted it to be a breeze.

The remake follows these same lines. Why? They'd much rather put in a good, new experience than re-hash an old one, especially if it wasn't easily creatable with the plug-in-play mechanics and graphics used in game cluster already.

1) Yeah, there's not just one word for everything. Words and definations are expansive. "Kuu / a(ku) / a(keru) / kara / sora: sky, air, empty." The same kanji has three different ways of being said with those three different interpretations, that I know of. Now, I'm not a kanji expert. I just googled "sky" and "kuu" and barfed out whatever the first good looking page stated. Regardless, guessing on Japanese written language aside, what I am certain of is the many meanings of one character, the kanji shared by both sora and kuu. Language is a radical enough of a beast, and Japanese just has three times the heads, making it far more crazy.

2) "That director", being Shinichi Shimomura, has not had any more involvement in the Kirby series. Either due to dying or falling out with HAL (no one seems to know for sure), every game he ever has been credited to was mentioned in that first question regarding him. If he had any more parts with Kirby, they would have been duly noted. Also, that would mean the Animal Friends would show up, and not just on some lousy cards in a mini-game.

3) The original Dark Matter is dead, or at least was beaten into submission. The reason the look-alikes keep coming over the original is because that was the theme set by that triad of titles. They were so definitive to the series that now every boss has to mirror that motif in some way.

4) Oh, shush. It was a stupid moment in a cartoon that I haven't seen in, what, a decade? I'm more surprised I even remembered the event at all. Refer to the previously mentioned "quip" for why I don't really care. Does it really matter who died or was claimed to be sent to a dungeon? The duo was still noted as having been slain and reborn later in Digital World at a later point in time. The "You sent him to the dungeon" was just such a prolifically horrible moment that I permanently affix it to all Digi-deaths, even when entirely inappropriate. The problematic pair were still noted as having fallen later, so nothing really changes. Myotismon still did all of them in, but Wizardmon was cooler and stands out more in memory. In the end, all that changes is when the death was retconned. In this corrected case, it's still in the same season.

But, you're right. Wizardmon did flat-out die. Actually, a lot of Digimon were flat out deleted. This goes to the amendment to the death rule I forgot about: "Depending on the intended audience of the show, ie: young children or Y7!, death is permitted. However, not for children." Postnatal abortions are still frowned upon, up until the, oh, 38th trimester? Younguns gotta be left alive, but adults are jerks and can kick the bucket. That's the apparent philosophy, I guess.

4) Good! :D

You know the brand of humor some folks find in place names like, oh, Lake Titicaca? Well, pingas is the same thing blown hugely out of proportion. It is a YouTube meme that came from a clip from the Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog cartoon, where Dr. Robotnik say, "Snooping as usual, I see?" but the voice actor put too much emphasis on the pingas. So, stick that poop on YouTube and watch it take root in the fertilizer field and sprout into the latest fad. Uncle Gobbo's Lesson of the Day! You can't spell "fade" without "fad"!

Sweet relish, it's true! In the castle, if you take the lowest path in the room of doors, and possibly some of the other ones the place is a maze, you indeed find yourself with some Candy and a Shotzo. Like Pomp said, stand on it for a bit and the sucker goes splat.

This doesn't happen any other game. In fact, in Adventure, if you make contact with an invincible while invincible, you get a star linked between yourself and them, from the contact, and more reeeally slow. They don't pop or die or anything. It's annoying more than anything.

Now, I could never find a Lollipop next to a Gordo to test that deal out, but there are, in deed, more than one way to stop the supposedly unstoppable forces. The Microphone can be used to silence the cannons. On two occasions, the first being the first mike found in the first room within the castle of Lololo and the second being in Float Islands by a sea jumping Shotzo, these guys can be blown up.

This lead me to consider if, if fact, Shotzo were not unkillable but just had a ton of hit points, which would explain why they would only die after five or so seconds of hyper contact. However, that probably translates to an astronomical number of hits, and I didn't have the patience to see it through.

On the plus side, while validating this notion, I discovered a Maxim Tomato (or "Magic Food Bag") in Castle Lololo that appears in no FAQ or secrets pages on this or any other site. You stand to the right of a question block in the room after the mini-boss Lololo and it appears on top of the block. No one mentions it at GameFAQs and it isn't mentioned in our Dream Land page. I'm sure I'm not the first person to find it, but I'll have to make sure to add it to the knowledge base so that all benefit from it.

So, thanks for all that info, Pompy. You led to us all being made a little smarter. Have a cookie.